My first year, I recall struggling to find a place to plug in and play. When I finally did, I spent the first few minutes fiddling around with the amp, until I got a tap on my shoulder from Brandon Niederauer. Seeing that Col. Bruce had just fallen to Brandon’s feet in a way that felt like a spiritual passing of the torch to the next generation, I gladly gave my cable over to him and moved on. The amount of talent that have found their way to this camp over the years is absolutely dizzying and it’s almost impossible not to find comparison creeping its way in to your brain, especially when there are young shredders roughly half your height that can run circles around you at any given moment. In a conversation I had with Luther Dickinson later in the week, it truly cemented something I had been ruminating on, that we lose sight of our own strengths when we focus too much on things that others can do that we can’t. “Comparison is the thief of joy” is the phrase that I return to on a regular basis, and this is that feeling personified.”
